With Stephen King currently riding a wave of renewed popularity, there seems to be no end to the up and coming film and TV adaptations of Stephen King’s work and Stephen King inspired TV shows and films.
In particular, it seems that movie makers and TV producers have cottoned on to the wonderful way that Stephen King manages to combine coming of age stories with fantasy and horror in many of his books.
The most obvious examples of this in Stephen King’s back catalogue are, of course, Stephen King’s It, the 2017 adaptation of which has recently become the highest grossing horror film of all time, and the 1986 film, Stand By Me, which was adapted from Stephen King’s 1982 novella, The body.
The New Mutants, which is due to be released on 13th April 2018, appear to be taking a leaf out of the Stranger Things book in that it unashamedly admits to having taken inspiration from the work of Stephen King, although the author is not reported to have had any direct input into the film.
The New Mutants film is based around the story of five young mutants who are just learning about their superpowers. The young mutants are teenagers, so they have all the usual teenage impulses, and, combined with their mutant abilities, that makes them extremely dangerous, so they are detained against their will in a special institutional facility to protect the population outside. Here’s the official New Mutants Trailer to give you a taster of the film.
The New Mutants movie is based on the Marvel comic book team of superheroes of the same name that have appeared in a Marvel graphic novel and their own comic series, which ran from 1983 until 1991.
They exist within the wider Marvel Universe, so the film will be working with a familiar theme as that of the X-Men film series. It has been reported that several X-Men characters may be appearing in the movie, including Professor Xavier, so it would seem that fans of the X-men won’t be disappointed by the spinoff.
However, The New Mutants movie looks like it is going to be far more of a horror film than it is a typical superhero Vs supervillain film, and it has been described as a "’Stephen King meets John Hughes'- horror movie."
The New Mutants will be, it would appear, the first of a kind; a superhero film that takes itself into the realms of horror. The chairman and CEO of Fox, Stacey Snider, the distributor of the film, has described the new genre as being more like The Shining than a “teenage superheroes save the world” type of film. He also said that The New Mutants had been partly influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
The film does take elements from so many classic horror films in that you have five hormonal teenagers locked in what could be described as the proverbial “haunted house”, only this time, the teenagers have some pretty awesome powers of their own.
Will The New Mutants appeal to fans of Stephen King and Marvel superhero fans alike? If it does, this Stephen king / superhero crossover could be even bigger than the 2017 It movie.
The New Mutants film is due for release on 13th Apr 2018 and, if it’s a success, sequels are planned. Let’s hope that The New Mutants turns out be all that it could be.
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